Fingering cybercrime

Biometrics researchers at the

have developed system which brings sophisticated fingerprint recognition a step closer.

"This research paves the way toward efficient methods of preventing unauthorized access to handheld devices, such as cell phones, wireless handheld devices and electronic audio players, as well as to secure Web sites," explained Venu Govindaraju, Ph.D., principal investigator, UB professor of computer science and engineering, and director of the university's Center for Unified Biometrics and Sensors (CUBS). "It also will help make fingerprint matching for forensic applications more effective."

Fingerprint access can potentially eliminate the need for consumers to remember all those annoying passwords, he added.

The UB research addresses a key problem that has emerged in the quest for fingerprint access to electronic devices and Web sites: quantifying how much security is possible with fingerprinting, given that most commercial sensors tend to capture only partial fingerprints.

"This problem needs to be overcome before it will be possible to routinely replace passwords with fingerprints," Govindaraju said.